


À la claire fontaine

by raucousraven



Category: Numb3rs
Genre: Jossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-10
Updated: 2012-07-10
Packaged: 2017-11-09 13:30:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/455977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raucousraven/pseuds/raucousraven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He thinks, <i>this is how empires end</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	À la claire fontaine

He thinks, _this is how empires end_ : a flash of silver light arcing across the face of a stranger, an instant of perfect, unwelcome comprehension. The skies lightening and lowering in an instant as the clouds reassert their dominion. “The firm sends its sincere condolences, Mr. Eppes.” Or perhaps they end like the slow collapse of his second son, the spires and arches of a city crumbling over the place holding all they have left of the woman who loved them. The words overlain on the action make it real, a thing, something seeping past the glacial numbness that has kept him moving down the narrow infinite hall of ritual days, their dire solemnity no respite: _my wife is dead._ He’s having trouble breathing.

Margaret Eppes had worked for some division of this law firm for over two decades; she made associate right before Charlie got into Princeton. She made partner some years after he got out, but had had only a little time to enjoy her beautiful office, with its light birch panels and solid side of glass. 

Alan looks up to see sympathy haunting the edges of the senior partner’s business face, notes the small breaks of grief – the downward corner of the mouth, the flinch-flicker of the lashes. But as no one has found words to ease the roiling fury and pain in his gut, so he has nothing to give this man who worked side by side with his wife, whose carefully non-denominational winter cards always came with a book of matches and a kosher treat each for the boys, who brought lists of depositions with his own hands when Margaret requested them from her hospital bed. 

It’s not raining but keeps looking like it’s about to, the sky quenched and overcast, impersonal clouds heavy with water. Their good shoes are already soaked through. 

He would have liked to bury her in Montréal, on the slopes by the shadowed dome of St-Joseph, near where they’d ended up on their first walk together with intent. She’d been a marvel, a beauty, arms swinging freely, dark eyes unafraid, her hair a rippling chestnut under the fall-weather cap. He’d kissed her for the first time under the trees on Mont-Royal, and felt his life change in the smell of the leaves and her soft laugh as she wound her fingers through his curls and leaned in again. Margaret. _Marguerite_ , he had murmured, her beautiful hands in his, _ma belle, ma bien-aimée_. When he looks up again, the senior partner is gone. 

He wishes he were a big enough man to care. 

_À la claire fontaine, m’y allant promener_ , she’d sung over both her babies, tucking one dark strand behind her ear as Don clung to her fingers. _Chante, rossignol, chante, toi qui a le coeur gai_ , as Charlie giggled and reached up again for her hair. Don was old enough to sing along by the time Charlie showed up. It’s still one of Alan’s best memories, Don’s boy-soprano in tune with Margaret’s Conservatory-trained voice in a small room full of sunlight, both singing in time to Charlie’s kicking feet.

Alan glances at his sons, and sees himself in Don’s tight jaw, in Charlie’s clenched hands. He sees Margaret again in the pallor of their skin, the tilt of their necks, the strength and grace of their wrists. In the transparence of their grief. His vision blurs, sky smearing out of sense.

She’d abandoned her first attempt to teach Don French when he flatly refused to learn any more. Alan later uncovered the regular teasings over his copies of _Astérix_ and the one dog-eared _Lucky Luke_ that used to be proudly displayed in his room. She’d stopped for good after the move to Pasadena, when three year old Charlie started to regularly _emmêler ses mots_ , around the time she stopped tuning the piano every few months. She also stopped singing, lost her melodies in the rush to send Don to Little League and summer camp, to pick up Charlie from the tutor’s, to find good tutors in the first place. Work from the firm grew in piles around her desk at home, her office light burning deep into the evenings. 

Charlie would later astonish her, their first year at Princeton, by shyly counting to 100 on a stormy snowlocked night in late February, her 46th birthday, both of them holding hands and very far from home. His pronunciation was nearly flawless, if almost clinically Parisian; none of her childhood’s tart lilt had softened the edges of his count. She’d had to teach it to him again, properly, after she got done hugging him and was able to speak through the grin.

She told Alan all this much later, around when Charlie was sixteen and starting his Ph.D, and when the late-night, low-voiced vicious accusations over the phone had mostly petered out. He’s still sorry about those. He’s still not sure he hadn’t been onto something. He’s pretty damn sure it doesn’t matter now. 

_You’ll put Margaret Eppes on the stone, Alan_ , she whispers toward the end. He almost ignites. "I’ll put your full name, _your_ name, _dammit_ Marguerite Marie!" He’s too loud, the nurse is glaring. Too bad. He’s still spelling her own name right on her own stone, even if that big New York firm had once refused to do the same. She hadn’t contested it, had still been supporting Alan through school at the time. Had already been pregnant with Don. 

_T’es pas mon père, toi_ , she whispers in reply. Amused, she’s smiling, at least he’s done that much. Made her smile once more before – _J’veut que ça soit ton nom le plus proche du mien, beau gars, quand je m’regarde de par là. Ca serait ben longtemps avant que tu me rejoignes, après tout. Margaret Eppes, Alan. Don’t forget._

As if he ever could. She’d been twenty-five by Notre-Dame-des-Neiges in autumn, still a little flushed and the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen the first time he’d asked her to marry him. A year later, she’d said yes. 

Alan walks the few steps to Don, who looks like he could use something to throw or perhaps violently take apart, and to Charlie, who’s crumpled against the soft earth, weeping like it’s the only language he knows. Alan puts a hand on Don’s shoulder, leaves it there until the tension suddenly cuts out. Don turns pleading eyes on him and walks off, quickly. Alan watches as a few dark-haired cousins peel off from the crowd of Manns, headed for intercept, before turning back to the freshly turned earth. 

He picks his second son up off the dirt and wipes his face, cradling him again, his mind far away on the side of a mountain in Montreal. Autumn, it had been, the leaves like roses, fragrant in every colour of fire and gold. He remembers. Alan rocks Charlie a little, murmurs a tune he can barely recall. _Il y a longtemps que je t’aime_ , he hums to them both, his shirt soaked through with tears. He can’t tell whose. 

_Chante, rossignol, chante,  
Toi qui a le coeur gai  
Tu as le coeur à rire  
Moi je l'ai à pleurer._

_Il y a longtemps que je t'aime,  
Jamais je ne t'oublierai._

**Author's Note:**

> Traductions/Translations:
> 
> My beauty, my beloved
> 
> At the clear fountain, as I walked on by – _A la claire fontaine_ is a traditional folk song; it emigrated to Quebec along with the first settlers and is still associated with Montreal today. Margaret sings Don the first verse and Charlie the third; Alan hums the chorus at the end of this piece.
> 
>  _Astérix_ and _Lucky Luke_ are both French comic book series. Along with _Tintin_ , they were often the francophone child’s early reading.
> 
> mix up his words 
> 
> You’re not my father… I want it to be your name closest to mine, handsome fella, when I look at myself from over there. It’ll be a long time before you rejoin me, after all.
> 
> Notre-Dame des Neiges is the primarily francophone cemetery on the Western slope of Mount Royal. Mont-Royal is the primarily Anglophone cemetery adjoining it. 
> 
> Sing, nightingale, sing,  
> You with the merry heart  
> You have a heart to laugh  
> I have one to weep.
> 
> I have loved you long,  
> Never will I forget you.
> 
>  _note_ : This tiny piece was written almost without volition in the midst of Season 2, as an attempt to figure out who Margaret Eppes might have been. It was almost immediately Jossed. Still.


End file.
